Sony Ericsson T616 Phone - Next Generation (AT&T)

Rating:
Summary: Student
Review: I have had three phones in my life and this was, by far the most sophisticated and, by far, the worst. The camera is worthless, even in the daylight. It kept saying that I had no memory so I deleted the bad pictures that came with it. That did not help. So basically I can't receive text messages. My roommate and I both have the same service but always has a much better signal.
The worst feature is the loud cracking sound that happens about once every minute. It is much louder than the voice on the other end and acturally hurts when it happens.
The internet takes forever to load...when it works.
The sim card dislodges in the middle of a conversation.
I'm buying a new phone tomarrow after having this one for much too long.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent phone for the buck
Review: This phone is loaded with bells and whistles. This is one of the best phones that i have ever owned. The battery life is excellent, I charge the phone about every 3 days(usually waits until the bar is empty befor recharging) the talk time is great. Very small lightweight. I have MMode with att and i also use my phone with my laptop to access the internet at times when i am not in a hotspot. The IR on this phone works great and barely needs line of sight to make it work w/pc. Software was provided w/phone and it is very easy to sync outlook and contacts. voice support is really great also. I purchased this phone for $49 from ATT store, price was originally $199, but i printed out ad from Att website and took to the Att store and they matched the price...What a steal!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Crummy design
Review: I've been using this phone for nearly a year now, and have come to some conclusions. Mostly, this phone is overpriced, and not very good quality.
PROS:
-Size is fairly small
-Bluetooth capable; can sync with address book via iSync in Mac OS X

CONS:
-Makes loud cracking sounds in my ear about every minute I'm speaking (this gets old really fast)
-Reception fades in and out; often hear complaints from others that the phone gets too quiet and then too loud
-Reception on my end is shoddy
-Screen is worthless in daylight; cannot see it at all if the sun is out.
-Camera is ridiculous. The photo quality is so poor it's not worth putting on as a camera.
-I prefer flip phones; wish I could find a different phone with Bluetooth that was a flip phone.

Rating:
Summary: Ring tone fun with t616
Review: Lots of people here are complaining about the lack of MP3 ringtone. What they don't realize is that the T616 can also play midi files, or more specifically General Midi music files. You know all those midi songs that people used to put on their websites? Well you can use them all on you T616, and if you have a midi editor you can pick out the chunks of the songs you like. This is great as GM .mid files are free and occupy a legal grey area as to copyright if a person creates one from scratch and then gives it away. So you can legally download just about any song or fragment of a song into the phone for free. This is better than mp3 or aac in many ways.

However the camera is the worst ever!!!!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Pros and Cons
Review: PROs: It is small, and it is useful for making and receiving 'phone calls. You can customize the background picture and the ring tones (but can't use tones in mp3 or AAC formats). The Bluetooth is great.
CONs: Camera function is pitifully low in quality, really a joke, so you may wish to load good quality pictures from your Mac. The Sync for addresses works, but unfortunately the formatting of the files means that businesses are listed separately from individuals, and many entries do not end up in proper alphabetical order. Advanced features like email and Internet access are essentially worthless, and cost extra; in no way can they compare with a laptop computer. Needs much more memory and reliable address-formatting. Code for making custom ring-tones is cumbersome and impractical to do on the 'phone: needs mp3 and AAC compatibility to be any real fun.

Rating:
Summary: It's okay
Review: With its sleek european styling and the Sony pedigree, this phone doesn't have the performance to match it's looks. I get a clear reception when I switch from the ATT Wireless network to Cingular. As a simple mobile phone, the T616 does it's job admirably. This is where the fun stops. I use the email function for the phone as much as I do making calls, and Mmode is kind of a joke. You can't save attachments, it can't decipher email from some character sets (and they are written in English!), and there is not enough low memory to even view attachments. The phone book is limited in functionality, too.

The internal bluetooth was not a problem to use, though I decided to synch with my Outlook Express at home via the web page rather than using my Outlook at work (a problem I'll have to take up with my IT person).

The camera is on par with other CAMERA PHONES. I don't see why people review the camera function on these phones as if they should have the quality of a Nikon SLR.

It's a good phone which I got for a good price when I switched from Sprint to ATT. I expected a bit more high tech from Sony to go along with the Ericsson styling, however. I'm giving it 3 stars only because I can't give it 3 1/2 which is what it really deserves.